China: the land of dumplings and dim sum. I’m going to be frank here and say that I’ve never actually eaten Chinese food out. And yes I do live in Melbourne where there is a huge Chinese community. I’m going to be even more honest and say that I’ve never actually even tried to. I’ve watched people eat it, but never dabbled in it. Up until recently, Asian food was simply a no-go zone for me because nuts seem to be too prevalent. Whether that was logical or not, it was the case. Only recently have I begun to dabble in Japanese food, and that being said: I’m still only just dipping those chopsticks into the udon noodle soup.

Because really, Asian food kind of just scared me. It was all so foreign. If you look at other cuisines, they tend not to feel so different. Let’s look at Mexican for example. It is full of foreign words like ‘enchilada’ or ‘frijoles’. I (the expert!) have had to help many friends navigate through a Mexican menu which to them is gibberish, but to me (somehow over the years) has become second nature. But, when you break it down, it’s just e.g. a chicken wrap in some form or another. And beans. And tomato. All familiar items. Similarly, Spanish paella is really just rice, like risotto, with vegetables or meat. Again, things we are all well-accustomed to.

Asian food, particularly Chinese food, is much more intriguing and different. I still don’t quite know what dim sum is. I know what a dumpling looks like, but I really have no concept of what it would taste like (and I certainly don’t understand Melbournians obsession with dumplings!).

So. I was hoping (it was a long shot) that I would be able to try some Chinese food when in Hong Kong.

Negative.

My brother’s highlight of our family holidays is always the food – as the only one without dietary requirements, he was excited to try Chinese food. This meant that every time he was ordering Chinese food, I would look at the menu to see if I could eat anything. But there were a few challenges.

Problem number 1: there seemed to be two extremes – cheap Chinese food and expensive Chinese food. There wasn’t much by way of a middle ground. The result – I didn’t really want to experiment with a new cuisine at a street vendor or similar, but I also didn’t want to pay exorbitant amounts when I had no idea what I was getting.

Problem number 2: seafood and pork. Neither of which I am able to eat. These were present in a large majority of the food in Hong Kong. I don’t know whether this would also be the case in the rest of China, but walking through the streets of Hong Kong, all we could smell was seafood. For those allergic to fish/seafood, do not be too concerned. My father, anaphylactic to, well, we aren’t quite sure what but something of the fish/seafood variety. Do not worry, you can definitely still find plenty of food options when travelling to Hong Kong. As mentioned here, there is lots of Western food around so as long as you can stand the smell of seafood, you’ll be able to manage. One thing to note for the really severe: in Hong Kong, there is a popular snack food eaten by those of all ages – Korean squid. It is (I think) dried and sliced into tiny strips, which people eat with their hands. They were all over Ocean Park, there were a few stalls selling it along the Avenue of the Stars, as well as a few around and about Hong Kong. The point is that it is eaten with the hands, and so if you are highly allergic (e.g. via touch or surroundings), be very careful in these areas. And don’t worry – you will smell it a mile away. After smelling it the first few times, my fam and I began to feel sick every time we smelt the intense unfamiliar Korean Squid. It is also (I think) available to be purchased pre-packaged.

Problem number 3: peanuts. I didn’t expect peanuts to be particularly prevalent in Chinese cooking (based on my very basic understanding of Chinese food in Australia), however, this was pretty incorrect. They use a lot of peanut oil and peanuts (whether sauce or otherwise) in their cooking. I discovered this when the fam and I visited One Dim Sum. This is a Michelin-star dim sum restaurant in Mong Kok. I read about it online, as it is one of the cheapest Michelin restaurants in the world. There was a long queue, but before jumping in line, we decided we should first check out whether I would be able to eat there at all. Luckily, a very nice young Chinese couple overhead us talking and offered to help. They had gone to an international school so they spoke brilliant English. They communicated with the staff member explaining my situation and the helpful staff member highlighted all the things that I could eat. It was about 50/50. The young couple passed on to me that the restaurant used peanut oil for all of their frying, which meant that anything deep fried (aka a large majority of the menu) contained peanuts. There were also some dishes which contained actual peanuts or peanut sauce. After the helpful couple and staff member had dedicated a good 10 minutes helping me, I decided it was much too risky, even though it was predominantly peanut oil (which is generally not what peanut Allergians are allergic to).

Problem number 4: Menus. The Chinese restaurants I looked at did have English on their menus, however, the English tended to be quite basic and often only described the main ingredient in a dish (e.g. chicken). My brother often ordered food, expecting one thing but receiving something completely different.

Problem number 5: the world is small. What this means is that my carefully planned Cantonese nut allergy translation sign wasn’t entirely effective when the waitress was from Nepal. This happened a few times. The best part was – strangely enough, when I handed my card to the non-Cantonese waiters or waitresses, they didn’t hand it back to me and respond with “Sorry I don’t speak Chinese”. Oh no. Rather, they looked at me with complete and total confusion, as if I had just asked them to read alien language, and with almost a bit of offence or horror, as if it was rude of me to expect that a person living in China would be able to speak Chinese. Obviously that’s just not a thing. I would definitely still recommend bringing a translation card, as it definitely still helped most of the time, but just be prepared. Luckily, where the waiter or waitress wasn’t able to speak Chinese, they always spoke English very well.

San Seb is the perfect summer vacay-spot for those seeking to escape the scorching summer heat that especially dominates the south of Spain. We were in San Seb for 3 nights in mid-August, perfectly timed (accidentally) for the San Sebastian festival – Semana Grande. Semana Grande takes San Seb by storm, complete with:-

PACKED streets (I’m talking can’t walk type of packed).

T H E most incredible fireworks display that I’ve ever seen for the international fireworks competition (I’m not normally such a fireworks fan, but this was just SO EPIC).

Spanish music playing on the streets with even the elderly (I’m talking 80+ sort of elderly) singing and dancing till 1/2 am.

bars spilling people out onto the streets with noise all through the night.

people dressed up as pirates running around (I still don’t know what the significance of this was).

traditional Spanish circle/line dancing in the streets, with hundreds of participants.

finally, the highlight – the “running of the fire bulls” , which involved people carrying papier-mache bulls on their shoulders which were (wait for it) shooting out fireworks. Not only do these bulls run through the over-crowded streets of San Sebastian, but they actually charge AT people. This was the strangest, most terribly frightening yet hilarious situation, which my friend, C, and I seemed to be the only ones concerned by.

This festival completely takes over this little town. I was amazed at this place. I am sure that if I visited San Sebastian tomorrow, it would be an entirely different place to the one I visited during the festival. Festival or no festival, San Seb is a beautiful place and definitely one I’d recommend visiting.

I suppose I should talk about food and allergies now…

San Sebastian was quite an interesting place in this regard. The majority of the restaurants were pintxos bars. I have briefly touched on the pintxos topic before, but let’s get into the nitty gritty’s.

Pintxos are the Basque equivalent of tapas. However there are a few important differences.

When you go to a tapas bar, you are generally seated and order your tapas off a menu, some of which (the dishes served cold) are on display in a window cabinet at the counter. The waiter will then bring you your selection of cold and hot tapas for the table.

Pintxos can be very different. Pintxos bars are basically like giant buffets. There is usually an impressive display of pintxos varieties. You have a look at the buffet, select and take what you want. You then give them to the staff behind the counter, who will bring it to you after heating if necessary.

The important difference is that pintxos are much more difficult for Allergians to eat because of the cross-contamination issue. Since I am allergic to seafood, which was very prevalent amongst the pintxos, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable eating a dish that was sitting right next to it, especially when customers were serving themselves. If it hadn’t been a buffet, then the dish would have been prepared with the knowledge of my allergy.

My advice to Allergians is to choose pintxos bars that have additional hot dish options which are made in the kitchen to order and are therefore not on the buffet.

The second issue with pintxos for me was obviously the over-representation of seafood, as mentioned in my ‘Under the Sea’ post here. I can’t comment on how heavily nuts featured in the pintxos, as (because of the seafood issue) I didn’t ask. Also, as the pintxos bars during Semana Grande tend to be incredibly overcrowded (a queue-out-the-door and can’t-get-a-table sort of an overcrowded), it would have been extremely difficult to find out exactly which dishes contained nuts and therefore I felt much more comfortable avoiding the food altogether.

Now, the reason I found it far more difficult to find traditional Spanish food to eat in San Seb was that the restaurants were basically either pintxos bars OR Western cuisines. I didn’t see much by way of paella or tapas. I am willing to be corrected though.

The problem was that unlike our trip up to this point, in which it was just me and the BF travelling together, in San Seb we met up with two friends who had also been travelling around Europe. Luckily for me, my long-suffering BF has placed me ahead of his culinary experiences. Whilst I do feel bad, I felt much worse making my friends also miss out. The result? Dinner 1: Pintxos bar. This Allergian stood around admiring the amazing display of food and culinary delights. A feast for the eyes. At least the plus side for the BF was that, thanks to our friends being there, he got to enjoy pintxos with them. Dinner 2: boring Western food so that this Allergian could eat. But really, who doesn’t love a good burger. Even when in Spain… right?

Basically, if you are ever in Spain in August, make sure you get to San Sebastian for Semana Grande. What an experience! But if you are allergic to seafood or other foods frequently served as pintxos, don’t expect food to be a highlight (other than for the eyes).

My recent Melbourne spotting: Naked for Satan on Brunswick Street, Melbourne is a quirky pintxos bar with a great rooftop bar, populated by the likes of hipsters, after-work drinkers and even Pierce Brosnan (yep, that happened). I did, however, note a high presence of nuts on their menu.